The ongoing battle between P&O and the unions is moving towards a ballot.
The ferry giant recently announced plans to axe 1,200 jobs along with eight ships and the closure of four out of its 13 routes; the cuts are blamed on the decline in booze cruise business.
Rising competition from budget airlines and the Eurotunnel train service are responsible for taking business away, said P&O who added that weekend travellers had been pinched by tempting low costs flights to European destinations and slashed shuttle service prices.
Traditional booze cruisers were also being drawn to Eastern Europe by even cheaper alcohol and cigarettes said the ferry company. The 50% hike in French tobacco taxes had put a further nail in the P&O coffin, they admitted.
Despite price-matching deals offered by the company this summer passenger numbers have continued to go into decline. A million passengers a year had been lost since 1997 when 21 million people passed through Dover. That figure dropped to just 15 million last year.
The unions, however, refuse to accept the scale of job losses.
RMT general secretary Bob Crow said:
“RMT made it quite clear when this massive attack on our members was announced that we would not accept compulsory redundancies. Rather than sit down with us and discuss a long-term plan that would safeguard jobs, the company seems hell-bent on sacking hundreds, tearing up the contracts of those who are left and even slashing payments to those prepared to leave the company voluntarily.
“The scale of P&O’s job cuts shocked our members around the ports, but that shock has given way to anger over the insensitive and intransigent way in which the company is trying to bludgeon its workforce into submission.”
RMT has now balloted its members with the recommendation that they vote ‘decisively’ for industrial action.
Ballot papers will be issued to over 1000 RMT members at P&O Ferries in Dover, Hull and Portsmouth on November 17 and will close approximately two weeks later.
